1876 Cunard Lines View of Boston, Massachusetts

A fine 1876 view of Boston Harbor published by Ferdinand Meyer. This view, centered on the Royal Mail Steamship RMS Britannia, commemorates the exceptionally cold winter of 1844. By February of that year Boston Harbor was completely closed by ice. Commerce, long Boston's lifeblood, was largely being directed to New York and other cities further south. The Merchants of Boston, feeling the pinch, banded together to hire John Hill and the firm of Gage, Hittinger and Company to clear a channel some 7 miles long from the Boston's shipping docks to open water. This impressive achievement revived Boston's endangered shipping economy. Among the first ships to leave Boston via the channel was the RMS Britannia, a Royal Mail Steamship of the Cunard Line.

The 'British and North American Royal Mail Steam Packet Company,' later renamed after its founder, Cunard, acquired the British government contract to deliver the U.S. Transatlantic mail in 1838. To facilitate the contract they commissioned three steamships. With three majestic masts complementing a great smokestack, the first and largest of these was the RMSBritannia, commissioned in 1840. The RMS Britannia was also first steamship in the Cunard Line. The Britanniasailed from Liverpool, in england to New York, thence to Boston, from which it returned to Liverpool, a round trip journey of about 13 days.

This lithograph view of the event was commissioned by James Alexander. Alexander represented Cunard's interests in Boston and was a passionate advocate for the development and expansion of Boston Harbor. He was responsible for construction of the Boston Cunard Warf as well as east Boston's first grain elevator. Alexander commissioned this view in 1876 to celebrate the tenacity of the Boston Merchant class and possibly to woo the directors of the Cunard Company back to Boston, which they had abandoned as a freight port in 1874.